Art & Architecture Education Part II

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Text: Ar. Pervaiz Vandal

Education Fragmented- age of specialization

As compared to the earlier times education was now more focused on the abilities and techniques required to facilitate the production processes.  An efficient education system with a defined curriculum, taught in time-bound packages, with grading and testing to assess employability of students was developed. Such an approach lends itself to a systematic break-up of education into modules, to be taught in a given time, students tested and evaluated and thus graded like industrial goods to be used according to the demand of the customer. Holistic education of the Renaissance was replaced with a specialized, short term, education. Knowledge was split into useful and profits generating sciences and the not so useful arts; ‘age of specialization’ was born. Among the many, a small number who could afford longer periods of education went onto further specialize and lead the developments in science.

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Resonating Spaces

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Text: Ruqayya Rizwan
Photography: Ahmed Shajee Aijazi

Encountering space is a unique human experience. It amalgamates romanticism of art and literature, functionality and ergonomics of design and timelessness of brick and mortar. The experience itself engages maximum of our senses at the same time. For most part what we perceive as a visual treat is actually a sensory treat and therefore I can say with confidence if I entered a Rizwan Sadiq house with my eyes closed and ears shut I would be able to tell right away where I was, just like one can tell when one reaches home after a vacation.

Rizwan Sadiq is a contemporary architect. He finds his voice through the mechanics of building a space primarily through a plan. All credit due to his teachers and specially his mentor Tariq Hassan. A plan is the foundation of his houses. Elevation follows the plan. Everything else follows the plan and rightly so for you can live in a space that allows you flexibility and lets you grow as years pass by. If you ask Rizwan what is the strength of his plan he is likely to say his client’s lifestyle. If you ask me the same question I would say it’s the designer’s tribute to light as it falls upon a site.

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RM Naeem on Red chilies, secularism and the male ego

Text: Mariam Qureshi

Visuals: R M Naeem

RM Naeem’s work is a paradox in itself. His art work will speak loudly with an uncanny bluntness yet the execution will be calculated and with exceptional finesse. The reason why RM Naeem has managed to prove his mettle as one of Pakistan’s finest contemporary artist is not only because he has dabbled with all the contemporary artistic mediums such as installation and performance art, yet he has a deep respect and understanding of traditional art forms --- in short RM Naeem’s diversity as an artist is evident. RM Naeem talks about some of his recent works.  His work carries vision and sometimes ironic humor. 

He starts his discourse with a painting titled ‘Dulha Hazir Hai’. This painting depicts an emaciated man wearing a sehra and posing in front of a cactus. Naeem explains that in our society men want to get married without realizing whether they can support a wife and a family. The cactus implies the shape of a phallus, an innuendo of the prevalent sexual frustration amongst Pakistani people.

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Contemporary Notions of Home

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Text: Salwat Ali
Visuals: VM Gallery

Who we are is determined by where we come from and how we define ourselves.
A new type of person whose orientation and view of the world profoundly transcends his or her indigenous culture is developing from the complex of social, political, economic, and educational interactions of our time.


“Nation, culture, and society exert tremendous influence on each of our lives, structuring our values, engineering our view of the world, and patterning our responses to experience. Human beings cannot hold themselves apart from some form of cultural influence. No one is culture free. Yet, the conditions of contemporary history are such that we may now be on the threshold of a new kind of person, a person who is socially and psychologically a product of the interweaving of cultures in the twentieth century.”

-Peter Adler
Centered on the multi-visions of multiculturalism a recent VM exhibition, Homelands- A 20th Century Story of Home, Away and All the Places In Between, curated by Latika Gupta attempts to project this continuously evolving definition of ‘home.’ Comprising art productions selected from the British Council Contemporary Art collection Homelands is a concentration of British artists but their focus is not confined just to Britain because as Andrea Rose, Dir Visual Arts points out, “Britishness” itself is now an increasingly fluid concept, with the capital city, London, home to 300 different nationalities. The artworks in the exhibition explore a range of meanings associated with the word “homeland”: migration, exile, displacement, the search for belonging, and the life of a minority community. Through these themes, Homelands expands its scope to show how identities are no longer defined in terms of nationality, but also through language, religion, ethnicity and custom.

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